Gurthang is back in business.
Active on the Polish scene since 2010, the band featuring A.Z.V. (guitar/vocals, Beyond Life, ex-Cosmic Despair), G.H. (synthesizers, Beyond Life) and Turenn (drums/bass, Alex Snape, Becomes Astral, Suncross, Unbowed) unveil Martyrium, their eighth album, on Immortal Frost Productions in 2024.
Darkness gradually builds with Aesthetics of Solicitude, the first long composition, letting the introduction reveal a hazy heady sound before the vocal parts ignite the rhythm. Rooted in Black and Doom, the band’s sound remains heavy and oppressive, allowing a few harmonics to bring a more airy touch to the unhealthy mass that breaks to become mysterious again before darkening once more to finally resume its march through chaos, then calming down again as it joins Conundrum Unfolds and its fury. The track is much more aggressive than its predecessor, but manages to recreate the suffocation with a few slow passages, but the blast returns to strike relentlessly until the final moments before giving way to Antithesis of Creation, weaving reassuring tones before plunging us without warning into pure violence. The raucous howls fuel the composition’s heavy atmosphere, which also knows how to be more majestic, particularly on the finale, which leaves us with Discernment, some kind of both heavy and soaring interlude, where saturation arrives very gradually. Silence then sets in, before being disturbed by In Voidwards Begotten and its strange voices that emerge from the shadows, sometimes interspersed with eruptions of aggressive, crushing riffs that come crashing down on us without warning, delivering a few intoxicating harmonics that will also eventually disappear.
Gurthang‘s universe is as frightening as it is fascinating, combining the heaviness of Doom with the unhealthy sounds of Black Metal. Martyrium crushes us and forces us to contemplate its darkness before lacerating us with an impressive coldness.
90/100
